Bieiris de Romans

Who is Bieiris de Romans?

Bieiris de Roman was a trobairitz of the first half of the thirteenth century. Her birthplace was Romans near Montélimar. Other than her name, which includes her place of birth, nothing is known of the details of her life, which has led to a significant gap in knowledge for scholarship analyzing her work. She left behind one canso, "Na Maria, pretz e fina valors", addressed to another woman named Mary. The poem is written in the typical troubadour style of courtly love and has been consequently analyzed as a lesbian poem. Bieiris may, however, be simply writing from the masculine point of view, fully immersing herself in the masculinity of the genre. Nonetheless, the certain ascription of the poem to a woman makes it unlikely that there was any attempt to "fool" the audience: the poem is consequently emasculated. The Na Maria of the poem has even been interpreted as the Virgin Mary, and the sincerity and innocence of the lyrics do not disqualify it.

François Zufferey has argued that Bieiris' composition is in fact a work by Gui d'Ussel. Joining him in ascribing the poem of Bieiris to a man are Oskar Schultz-Gora, Gianfranco Folena, and Elizabeth W. Poe. The early French medievalist Jean-Baptiste de Lacurne de Sainte-Palaye believed it to have been written on behalf of a man. Bieiris' lesbianism, too, has its defenders: Pierre Bec, Magda Bogin, Renat Nelli, and John Boswell. Angelica Rieger, on the other hand, has forcefully defended her authorship but denied her lesbianism, saying that modern readers are imposing their biases onto the text. She has sought to show that Bieiris is in fact employing the language of affection popular among noblewomen of the period.